


Rita to the Rescue

by hopeless_eccentric



Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [3]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon Non-Binary Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Kidnapping, Other, Rescue Missions, good for him, i mean juno gets punched a few times for saying stupid shit, juno gets yoinked, rita saves him with the power of disco music and hacking, there are a few dumb goons and i love that for them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26168281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: Juno wasn’t the biggest fan of being damseled. Kidnapped, he could deal with. If he was kidnapped, he could kick or bitch his way out until he either got four ribs and a tooth shattered or he escaped. On a good day, he would accomplish both.The problem with being damseled was that he couldn’t punch his way out of it.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev & Rita, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921492
Comments: 42
Kudos: 224





	Rita to the Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all!! This was a tumblr commission for an anon! My commissions are still open, though I've got a longer one I'm working on rn so they might be backed up a few more days. Juno bullies a bunch of goons in this one and I love that for him so much
> 
> Content warnings for mentions of injury, kidnapping, and bound wrists

Juno wasn’t the biggest fan of being damseled. Kidnapped, he could deal with. If he was kidnapped, he could kick or bitch his way out until he either got four ribs and a tooth shattered or he escaped. On a good day, he would accomplish both. 

The problem with being damseled was that he couldn’t punch his way out of it. His wrists were bound so tight he couldn’t feel his fingers, and the coat that held his spare plasmacutter had been confiscated. He was, as far as he could see in the inky black of whatever storage room he’d just awoken in, stuck. 

That could mean only one thing, and his stomach twisted at the thought of it. Inevitably, a crew member would have to come rescue him. It wasn’t that he was averse to being rescued. He was just averse to someone getting in the line of fire for his sake. 

Juno would’ve spent a lot longer pondering all that if a weasel-faced punk and his very strong, very stupid looking friend hadn’t just strolled into the room, thrown on the lights, and grinned like they owned the place. 

They didn’t, or course. Juno knew middlemen when he saw them. 

“Juno Steel,” Weasel grinned. His voice left a greasy sheen on the ear, and Juno nearly winced. 

“Wow, starting with the full name. Very original,” Juno snorted. His voice trailed off when the goon cracked his knuckles. 

“Originality has nothing to do with it, Steel. You have something that we want gone,” Weasel continued. 

“Well, you could’ve just asked me—“

“Your life.” 

Juno sighed. 

“Oh my God, you’re gonna kill me with this shitty video game dialogue alone,” he groaned. 

“Fitting that you would use your last moments of life to complain.” 

“Yeah, yeah, sure. That’s great. Why aren’t I dead yet?” Juno asked. “If you want me dead, and you went to all the trouble of finding the shittiest chair this side of the galaxy to tie me to, why am I still here?” 

“Big boss wants info,” the goon supplemented. 

“Just like he said.” 

“Great. Wonderful. Glad we’re all having an intelligent conversation here. Who’s the boss?” 

“None of your concern,” Weasel returned. Juno glared at him, eyes half-squinted from the reflection off the top of his bald head. He wondered if Weasel shined it every time he interrogated a prisoner, or just the special ones. 

“Seriously?” Juno groaned. “Seriously. You want information, but won’t even tell me what it is or who you’re--oof!”

Juno broke off to gasp when the goon punched him square in the gut. 

“We might be done here already, if not for our talkative guest,” Weasel sneered. 

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Juno tried to laugh, but ended up panting instead. “You said you’re killing me when you’re done.”

“Well—yes,” Weasel started. He raised one finger, as if to make a better counterpoint, but his face and hand fell in tandem when none came to mind. 

“He’s got a point, boss,” the goon shrugged. 

“Silence!” 

“Anyway, who’s the boss? You don’t look like Kanagawas, and you’re not HCPD—” Juno broke off with a wince. “Is Vicky pissed that I forgot her birthday again?”

“Who?” the goon returned. 

“Shit,” Weasel murmured. “I forgot Vicky’s birthday.”

“She doesn’t tell anybody, boss. I wouldn’t worry.”

“Well, Steel seems to think it grounds for kidnapping. You can never be too careful,” Weasel thought aloud. “You’re stalling us, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“You little—” 

“Spare me.”

Weasel took a moment to recompose himself, running a spidery little hand over his unnaturally shiny head, as if the memory of where hair had once been soothed him. Juno secretly hoped he might twirl his mustache as well, but he wasn’t so lucky. 

“Nobody’s coming for you, Steel. You know that, right? In fact,” Weasel chuckled darkly. Juno rolled his eyes. “Mars thinks you disappeared months ago, and the HCPD is far too scattered to take up your case.”

“I’d take you guys over the HCPD any day,” Juno snorted. 

“Aw gee, thanks,” the goon smiled, revealing a jaw missing half its teeth. 

“That wasn’t a compliment, you dolt!”

“Sorry, boss,” he sighed. 

“Hey, be nice,” Juno cut in. 

“If you like your tongue how it is, I’d be quiet,” Weasel snapped. 

“Finally, a decent threat!” Juno yelled in triumph. “You’re getting better at this.”

“Quiet! Now where were we...let’s see…” Weasel trailed off. “We want information, we’re going to kill him—”

“Nobody’s gonna know he’s dead?” the goon supplied. 

“Exactly!” Weasel cried. 

“Wait,” Juno interrupted. 

“What now?”

“You should thank him,” Juno pointed out, trying and failing to restrain his shit-eating grin. 

“For what?” Weasel asked, narrowing his eyes. 

“He helped you remember your point. You should be nicer to the people you employ—” he broke off to squint at Weasel’s handwritten name tag. “Doghouse?”

“Daniel,” Weasel corrected. “I come from a long line of doctors.”

“Oh,” Juno said. “That explains it.”

“Stalling again!” Weasel cried. “Engstrom is going to kill us.”

“Boss,” the goon tried and failed to cut in. 

“Engstrom?” Juno laughed. “Seriously?”

“That’s it,” Weasel spat. “Hit him again.”

“No,” the goon returned, crossing both foot-thick arms across his chest. Weasel raised a greasy eyebrow. 

“Excuse me?”

“Say please, boss,” the goon said like it was an announcement. 

“There you go! Strong, independent goon,” Juno snorted. “You don’t need a boss.”

“Like Juno Steel said. You should be nicer to me,” the goon added. 

“He’s our prisoner!” Weasel protested. 

“Yeah, a prisoner with basic manners,” Juno said. 

“Fine. Hit him again, please,” Weasel conceded. 

Juno really regretted laughing when the goon sunk his fist into his chest again, for the air coughed its way out of his chest and burned his lungs all the way up. 

. . . 

“Rita, are you sure I can’t go down yet?” Ransom asked from the car seat at her side, wide eyes fixed on the hacked security stream as if looking away might kill him. 

Rita didn’t know much about Mister Ransom, other than that he seemed to make Mister Steel a lot happier and a little stupider every time he was around. She didn’t mind too much. Everyone had to be stupid for a little while sometimes. Even she got tired of being the galaxy’s most talented hacking genius.

“Not until I’ve messed with their systems, Mistah Thief,” Rita returned. Her fingers clicked away on the board like the racing of feet drawing ever nearer to a finish line. 

“Then please, I entreat you, mess with them faster,” Ransom groaned. His fingers drummed against the steering wheel almost as fast as hers drummed on the portable computer she brought into the car. 

“Hold your gigahorses there,” Rita returned. “I’m just as scared as you are, but we gotta do things right.” 

Ransom sighed with the weight of a thousand planets and shook his head. 

“Have they injured him at all?” He conceded to ask instead. 

“Not that I can see. He’s been punched a couple times, but he looks pretty okay to me, Mistah Ransom,” Rita supplied, leaning a little closer to the grainy security feed’s screen. “I think he just blew a raspberry at the guards.” 

“Guards?”

“Yeah, two of ‘em. One’s a real meathead looking guy, and the other looks like a rat.” 

“Are they armed?” Ransom asked. He did a series of acrobatics to lean over close and bent comically low just to get a good view of the screen. . 

“The rat guy’s got a blaster, but his pal doesn’t have anything that I can see.” 

Ransom opened his mouth, as if to ask a question, but closed it instead. He sighed. 

“Are you alright, Mistah Thief?” Rita asked. She felt her mouth pull into a frown as Ransom stood back up and ran a hand through his hair, seemingly not noticing when he ruined the gel job he had done mere hours ago. 

“Yes, I—“ Ransom broke off with a shake of his head. “It’s stupid, my apologies.” 

“It ain’t stupid, Mistah Ransom.” 

“I suppose that every time I’ve ever known that Juno was kidnapped I was with him,” Peter finished. He swallowed thickly. 

“Are you gonna cry, Mistah Thief? ‘Cause if you cry, there’s no way I ain’t gonna cry too,” Rita cut in before he could say anything else. 

“No,” Ransom returned. “But thank you for asking.” 

“Back in Hyperion City, Mistah Steel got kidnapped just about every other week,” Rita sighed, turning her gaze back towards the screen and continuing to tap away at her code. “He solved a lotta mysteries that way, but I always said he could do that without giving a girl a heart attack every dang time.” 

Ransom nodded thoughtfully. 

“He seems the type,” he almost smiled. “What’s that code of yours doing?” 

“A couple of things,” Rita shrugged. “Mostly giving you a distraction so we can sneak in.” 

“We?” 

“Huh. Never knew you spoke French, Mistah Thief,” Rita mused. 

“I—“ Ransom broke off to sigh. “We’re both going in?”

“That’s what I said, ain’t it?” 

Peter paused. “Have you ever done a stealth mission before?” 

“Nope!” Rita grinned. 

“Then, may I ask, why are you doing so?”

“Because I got one heck of a distraction!” 

. . . 

Juno jumped when the door flung open, and jumped again when he saw nobody was behind it. The chair made a pathetic little scooting noise both times, like a frightened French horn. 

“What the hell was that?” Weasel yelped. 

“Looks like a ghost, boss,” the goon shrugged. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Weasel shot back, though he jumped the next two times the door opened and shut with nobody on the other side. “It must be a glitch.” 

“Doesn’t look like a glitch to me. Looks like a ghost,” the goon returned. 

“And why aren’t you worried about that?” 

The goon shrugged. 

“I can’t fight a glitch. I can fight a ghost.” 

Weasel rolled his eyes and tried his comms. No sound. He tried his comms again, punching in the same number over and over again, but it seemed a jammer had been put in place. 

“Engstrom’s gonna kill me,” Weasel groaned. 

“Yeah, speaking of which, what does your boss even want with me?” Juno interjected. 

“His car,” the goon shrugged while Weasel continued to battle his comms. 

“You!” Weasel wheeled around towards Juno. 

“Me,” Juno confirmed. 

“You’re behind those, aren’t you!” 

Juno snorted. 

“Seriously? I thought you guys weren’t half as stupid as you looked,” he chuckled. 

“Aw, thanks,” the goon blushed.

“That wasn’t a compliment, you oaf,” Weasel snarled. “If it wasn’t you, Steel, what is it?” 

Juno grin was hidden when the lights went black, then came back on in a painful shade of highlighter pink. They didn’t stay that way for long, however, oscillating between neon shades as Weasel forgot not to scream.

“Rita,” Juno beamed. 

. . . 

Nureyev knew his steps were far louder than they should have been, but he had a feeling that the aggressively cheesy disco music pumping through the intercoms would cover that. The music thrummed in his ears even louder than his pounding heart. 

“See, I told you we’d be fine!” Rita exclaimed from beside him. 

“What now?” 

“I said I told you we’d be fine!” Rita repeated. Nureyev winced at the audial onslaught. 

He had done his fair share of aesthetically pleasing missions, where he had impersonated the wealthy, the beautiful, and the tragically romantic. He had walked with the sound of a mournful violin and seized and broken hearts at his whim, leaving only an empty ache in the chest and the bittersweet spice of cologne. 

This was not one of those missions. 

As he clutched to his plasmacutter and looked around every corner like any step might be his last, he couldn’t help but think that the strobe lighting and confetti was a little much. 

“If I got all the floorplan and cameras right, Mistah Steel should be—” Rita paused to tap on the bulky computer she still managed to hold while jogging to keep up with Nureyev’s stride. “Two lefts, a right, another left, straight down a bit with three doors, and then another left.”

Nureyev tried to internalize that for a moment, but a recently dropped bass on the rave song now snaking through the hallway like a giant, unseen, and very fun beast was making it very difficult to do so. 

“Could you repeat that?”

“No worries, Mistah Ransom,” Rita reassured. “I got it all right here!”

Rita tapped her forehand, nearly dropping the computer in the process. Nureyev dived for it like a volleyball, but Rita got there first. 

“That was real funny, Mistah Ransom. You looked like some kinda giraffe doing ballet,” she snorted when he righted himself and brushed the brick red Martian dust from his lapel. 

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he sighed. 

“Aw, don’t be sad! You’re a real handsome ballet giraffe! Just like in this one movie, Invasion of the Ballet Giraffes 4: We Know We Said There Were Gonna Be Ballet Giraffes in the First Three But There Weren’t and We’re Sorry and We Promise They’re in This One This Time We Pinky Swear!”

“Out of curiosity,” Nureyev began, breaking off to duck his head around the corner. “Were there Ballet Giraffes in that one?”

“No,” Rita sighed like the absence of Ballet Giraffes had shattered her heart in two. “Mistah Steel loves that one though. At least I think he does. It’s what I put on for our first ladies night!”

Nureyev couldn’t help a grin at the thought of Juno, twenty years younger and in some sort of novelty pajamas, likely throwing popcorn at the screen instead of letting his nails dry. He knew he would have to clear his head of the thought eventually if he wanted the mission to work, but with a clear, neon green hallway up ahead, he supposed he could indulge the thought for a moment. 

“And what is Juno Steel like on a ladies night?” Nureyev chuckled. 

“Well, usually I put on a bad stream and we both eat food, do each other’s nails, and complain about the movie I put on,” Rita explained. “That first one though, we both ate an entire pint of ice cream and then decided never to do that again. Mistah Steel’s lactose intolerant.”

Nureyev couldn’t help a chuckle, a wave of fondness overcoming the tension wrapped around his pounding heart. 

“I wonder how he’s doing now.”

. . . 

“Look, I’ve seen all the streams. If you keep screaming at the disco ghost, it’s only gonna get worse,” Juno advised sagely while another loudspeaker came on with a different, objectively horrible song. 

The door slammed shut again, and, as if that of all things had been the final straw, the goon ripped it off its hinges and left. 

Juno sighed. 

“Looks like you're stuck in here with me,” he said with a shake of his head. “I mean, you could always try to use your comms again.”

Weasel narrowed his eyes. 

“You’re trying to trick me, Steel,” he snarled, though he took out his comms anyway. “Fine. Why don’t I?”

“YOU’VE REACHED THE WRONG NUMBER, MISTAH BAD GUY!” Rita’s voice called from the other end of the comms, so loud Juno could hear it feet away. He couldn’t help a grin at just how damn lucky he had to be to have a best friend like her. “AND WHILE I’M AT IT, THE DRAGON LADY DOESN’T GET THE CHAIR IN GAME OF CHAIRS! I HACKED THE SCRIPT FOR THE FINALE!”

“You’ll pay for this, once I get—” Weasel paused, his threat interrupted by a sudden realization. 

“Your goon?”

“Yes, I, uh—” Weasel broke off again. “You wouldn’t happen to remember his name, would you?”

Juno’s jaw dropped mockingly. 

“You don’t know your own employee’s name? What the hell is wrong with you?” Juno tried his best not to think about Rita. 

“I’ll be back,” Weasel spat, then turned on his heel, and left Juno entirely unsupervised. 

Unfortunately for him, that was the worst possible way to leave Juno Steel. 

. . . 

Of all the things Rita was expecting to see when they turned the corner into the cinder block square these goons called an interrogation room, an uncuffed and nonplussed Juno Steel was not one of them. 

She heard a sound from above her that was halfway between a sigh of relief and a choked laugh at the sight of Juno rubbing circulation back into his fingers while disco music blasted from the intercoms above and a constant stream of confetti continued to shoot from the air vents. All in all, he looked about as ready to have a party as he was to escape a kidnapping. 

“Mistah Steel!” she cried, though it was half a question. Juno met her in the middle for a hug before she could so much as raise her arms. “We was so worried about you! I spent some serious time just about ready to cry, but Mistah Ransom was pacing so bad I thought he was gonna pull something so I didn’t say nothing but I’m just glad you’re here and you’re okay!”

“I’m okay,” Juno reaffirmed. “You alright, Ransom?” 

“Oh, quit laughing. It’s not every day the love of your life gets kidnapped without you,” Ransom huffed. 

Juno snorted. 

“Get over here,” he chuckled. Rita couldn’t see Ransom from where she buried her face in Juno’s shirt, but she felt a pair of arms that pretended to be begrudging wrap around her shoulders from the side. 

“I told you, he’s a strong lady. I knew he was gonna be okay,” Rita murmured, face thoroughly smushed into Juno’s sweater. 

“I know,” Ransom sighed. “I never doubted you for a moment, my love.”

“You’d better not have,” Juno chuckled. After another moment, he wormed his way out of the hug, glancing between Rita and Nureyev like they had hung the sun, moon, and stars by hand. 

“What’s up, Mistah Steel?”

Juno shook his head, and swallowed. 

“Just good to have my family back. That’s all.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeehaw!! Please play disco music while reading the last part I'd HIGHLY recommend it. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll play disco music on your roof at 3am
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric to look into one of my free (you read that right, FREE) commissions or just to talk!!


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